10GbE access switches - Force10? HP? Brocade?

We are looking into a core switching upgrade as we move into a new colo. Our requirements are pretty simple, 2 x 24 port 10GbE (Optical please). We are heavy Dell users and are leaning towards a pair of Force10 S2410P's but Brocade's 24x line looks similar as well.

As of right now we would only be using ~16 total 10GbE ports between the two (VMWare hosts 12 10GbE total, 6 to each switch, and two 10GbE uplinks to our copper infrastructure (a stack of dell 6k series switches with 10GbE modules stuck in the back)

We are looking into a core switching upgrade as we move into a new colo. Our requirements are pretty simple, 2 x 24 port 10GbE (Optical please). We are heavy Dell users and are leaning towards a pair of Force10 S2410P's but Brocade's 24x line looks similar as well.

As of right now we would only be using ~16 total 10GbE ports between the two (VMWare hosts 12 10GbE total, 6 to each switch, and two 10GbE uplinks to our copper infrastructure (a stack of dell 6k series switches with 10GbE modules stuck in the back)

How far is F10's integration into Dell? Less than a year ago when I was going through the same gymnastics their elitist attitude & pricing was downright ridiculous when compared to Borcade's SX1600 and Hp's E8212zl, not to mention their lack of GUI (handy if for non-network admins to check things)...

We've been told many times that Arista is looking to be bought by a larger vendor as the exit strategy as they do not have the sales or volume to become profitable without this occuring. Similar to Woven and others the network switching market is a tough one to survive.

We've been told many times that Arista is looking to be bought by a larger vendor as the exit strategy as they do not have the sales or volume to become profitable without this occuring. Similar to Woven and others the network switching market is a tough one to survive.

Yep, it's a bunch of former Cisco guys that wanted a slightly bigger piece of the pie than they were getting...I know an insider who has stated as much...it was always about the buyout.

As of right now we would only be using ~16 total 10GbE ports between the two (VMWare hosts 12 10GbE total, 6 to each switch, and two 10GbE uplinks to our copper infrastructure (a stack of dell 6k series switches with 10GbE modules stuck in the back)

What does the hive think?

Buy them from the same vendor as your VMWare physical hosts? Or buy them from the same vendor as your upstream switches (Dell)?

Does anyone know if Arista supports BYO SFP's (obviously they won't do warranty replacement on third party modules, just wondering if they would swear of almost any support efforts like Cisco does if you turn on module compatibility mode). There's a significant savings to be had with third party SFP+ 1Gb modules versus what I'm finding for street pricing on the Arista branded modules.

We've been told many times that Arista is looking to be bought by a larger vendor as the exit strategy as they do not have the sales or volume to become profitable without this occuring. Similar to Woven and others the network switching market is a tough one to survive.

That's the kind of thing you'll always hear from the competition. That said, it's possible for almost any vendor, and likely for Arista. They're one of several smaller players, and like most they're using Broadcom merchant silicon. Their pricing is quite attractive, like $12k street for 48-64 ports of 10GBASE-T in 1u. You have to ask yourself how important it is if the name changes on the side of the box, and if the line goes away in a few years in favor of an acquirer's line. These days that's happening for platforms even without company mergers, like Cisco with NX-OS and ASR and everything else I haven't kept up with.

Arista's EOS is Linux-based and they release source as required by GNU, but I'm not a customer with access so I have little idea how helpful their repos might be in the event something gets orphaned.

I was always interested in the Force10s, too; I need to find some product-line reviews across the broad spectrum of current vendors. I'll pay extra not to have a GUI.

I'll echo Arista as a choice as well. They are doing a lot of outreach right now on the sales side to partners. So what if they get bought a few years from now, secondly who would buy them?

Building off commodity silicon like M Jones suggests is a death spiral for any company - you are fighting to build differentiation in software to command a better margin, or you are competing on margin. both are a tough one to win.

For a company like Arista who's exit strategy is to find a buyer the concern is what happens when that doesn't happen? The likely outcome is customers get screwed.

I'm not sure that's true anymore, sanguy - if anything then all proprietary stuff are dead or dying already in storage, servers, everywhere, almost everybody is building their systems from the same commodity hardware (think of Intel in SANs and NASes, Broadcom, Marvell etc in networking), the differentiation is in the software layer, that's where you can shine with your proprietary technology.

szlevi is right as far as I've seen. I've got multiple storage vendors using entirely commodity hardware; OEMed SuperMicro is very popular. I think mine are all using BSD-derived operating systems now, too. Almost all of the network vendors are using merchant silicon except Cisco, and even Cisco has gone there in recent products. Cisco Nexus is made by FoxConn now, according to the labels. I don't know about current VNX EMC stuff, but the only storage vendor I'm certain was using custom ASICs was 3Par, and that was a few years ago.

I'm looking forward to the first time a storage vendor wants me to license a virtual appliance. A good virtualization farm with live-migration is a straightforward path to high availability, sure, but it will still be amusing but inevitable when a storage vendor tries to get out of the hardware business.

There's nothing wrong with commodity hardware really, but recognize that if the savings isn't passed to you in the initial quote that you can't expect any direct benefit from your vendor using commodity hardware.

Brocade still designs in silicon (ASICs), but there are also quite a few FPGA applications now, and that number is growing. *Everything* is manufactured overseas, though...by FoxConn or a similar company. That's just how things are these days.

I'm not sure that's true anymore, sanguy - if anything then all proprietary stuff are dead or dying already in storage, servers, everywhere, almost everybody is building their systems from the same commodity hardware (think of Intel in SANs and NASes, Broadcom, Marvell etc in networking), the differentiation is in the software layer, that's where you can shine with your proprietary technology.

I agree on storage, we are a big Isilon shop and agree X86 platform is the way of the future for such things.

My bigger issue is on network switching it's taking a similar path using merchant silicon. It's all based off OEM designs with varying levels of effort on the SW that runs it. But from a network switch perspective if everyone supports the same standards and features what is the differentiator - the quality of the GUI?

For switching I want wire speed, good power efficiency, good reliability, redundant PSU/fans, stacking, and all the usual standards. As long as a vendor can provide that it's all about price. So if everyone offers the similar the highest volume player will typically win.

Arista is not a volume player, it's not a price player, and it's not a feature-set player - it was a right-time-right-place business that missed the market when IBM bought Blade, Dell bought Force-10, Brocade bought Foundry, etc, etc.

As the one who missed the boat it's also fairly predictable how it ends is my perspective - so I am simply saying I would think about that fact before buying a bunch of switches from them. Switching is a fairly medium-long term investment for most companies so expecting your vendor to be around in 3 to 5 years is not unreasonable, and I'd bet against that with Arista. And for lower price and feature parity you can get Dell/Force10 or IBM/Blade anyhow - which likely will be around.

My bigger issue is on network switching it's taking a similar path using merchant silicon. It's all based off OEM designs with varying levels of effort on the SW that runs it. But from a network switch perspective if everyone supports the same standards and features what is the differentiator - the quality of the GUI?

I went to a talk by Arista and their claim to fame was their software inside their switchs. So I think the analogy with Isilon is a good one. Commodity hardware with "special sauce" software on top.

Maybe for the players on the left of the visionaries axis, the leaders still do their own silicon in the data network world (with the possible exception of HP, Procurve was merchant, unsure about H3C), with good reason.

I'd have been shocked if a company using merchant silicon said anything different honestly.

HP is multi-vendor, actually even within a single switch: I bought our Procurve E8212zl a year ago and I was pretty surprised when I learned the 10GBASE-T module was built on Marvell (ex-Solarflare) SoC (rest of the switch is Broadcom, as always.)

I'd have been shocked if a company using merchant silicon said anything different honestly.

Certainly. It's irrelevant to the end-user either way though, once you know the performance and the features and quality of the software.

A storage vendor once touted to me the commodity nature of the hardware, but if the hardware is always kept under support it's irrelevant to me how much margin the manufacturer makes. It's not like I'm going to be buying replacement hardware on the commodity market if it's under support. In the same down-select another vendor touted custom ASICs as the key to performance. Once I know the performance, the means by which it is achieved isn't much of a concern for most use cases.

The obvious exception is if you plan to forgo support and do your own sparing prior to the 5-year mark when there would presumably be plenty of matching used units on the market, custom hardware or no.

MaxIdiot wrote:

the leaders still do their own silicon in the data network world (with the possible exception of HP, Procurve was merchant, unsure about H3C), with good reason.

Other than Cisco and HP, who do you consider to be a leader? Brocade/Foundry I guess, they were mentioned a using some custom silicon upthread. Juniper? Force10/Dell, Extreme, Huawei, and others must certainly be using off the shelf chips.

Not that its the end all, but at last check Gartner (hence leader/axis) had Cisco, Juniper, Brocade and HP on the visionary side. Again I don't know a ton about H3C, but prior to that purchase my personal list would've removed HP since they did essentially nothing to push technology or stay leading edge in LAN switching. Otherwise having a pretty tight grasp on technologies in the industry, and NDAd with most of those companies I completely agree.

My bigger issue is on network switching it's taking a similar path using merchant silicon. It's all based off OEM designs with varying levels of effort on the SW that runs it. But from a network switch perspective if everyone supports the same standards and features what is the differentiator - the quality of the GUI?

I went to a talk by Arista and their claim to fame was their software inside their switchs. So I think the analogy with Isilon is a good one. Commodity hardware with "special sauce" software on top.

But that's my point -- how special can the software be if they all support the same network standards? You either do STP, RSTP, VRRP, VLAN tagging, etc, etc or you do not. So anything above and beyond that is the differentiator -- but how much can that be?

But that's my point -- how special can the software be if they all support the same network standards? You either do STP, RSTP, VRRP, VLAN tagging, etc, etc or you do not. So anything above and beyond that is the differentiator -- but how much can that be?

Why shouldn't I want hardware to be commoditized? At this point I'd be pretty happy to know new firmware will be released for a long time, that new features will be added to that firmware without trying to monetize every single thing with a license, and that I don't need to worry about licenses or license keys once I've bought the hardware. All those things used to apply to Cisco and that was why I was a very loyal customer of Cisco at that time. Back then the competition was bad and worse, though, and I don't think that's the case now at all.

That article's point about blade servers is the biggest reason why I don't much care for blade servers. They're vendor efforts to de-commoditize (c.f. 'vendor lock-in') and they rarely offer me advantages worth the disadvantages in my deployments. As a RISC user it took me a long time to accept that microprocessors (and later virtualization) were converging on the worst ISA in the world, x86, but if I have to go there then why should I pay for the dubious value-added features we often get today? Better to throw in with Facebook and open hardware.

They're all going to move efforts into software because everything is going to software. Software RAID and combined RAID and filesystem layers like ZFS scale better and more cheaply than hardware RAID cards. Software defined networks are more flexible and capable than traditional gear, and the same applies to software-defined radios. Five years ago I had some production routers running Vyatta on commodity x86-64 hardware.

So I'll shop for 48 or 64 ports of 10GBASE merchant silicon in 1u, and I'll gladly pay more for a good implementation. I expect good and continuous software support and improvements and if they're not forthcoming as they so often haven't been in the past then I'll put OpenWRT on it.

But that's my point -- how special can the software be if they all support the same network standards? You either do STP, RSTP, VRRP, VLAN tagging, etc, etc or you do not. So anything above and beyond that is the differentiator -- but how much can that be?

Why shouldn't I want hardware to be commoditized? At this point I'd be pretty happy to know new firmware will be released for a long time, that new features will be added to that firmware without trying to monetize every single thing with a license, and that I don't need to worry about licenses or license keys once I've bought the hardware. All those things used to apply to Cisco and that was why I was a very loyal customer of Cisco at that time. Back then the competition was bad and worse, though, and I don't think that's the case now at all.

That article's point about blade servers is the biggest reason why I don't much care for blade servers. They're vendor efforts to de-commoditize (c.f. 'vendor lock-in') and they rarely offer me advantages worth the disadvantages in my deployments. As a RISC user it took me a long time to accept that microprocessors (and later virtualization) were converging on the worst ISA in the world, x86, but if I have to go there then why should I pay for the dubious value-added features we often get today? Better to throw in with Facebook and open hardware.

They're all going to move efforts into software because everything is going to software. Software RAID and combined RAID and filesystem layers like ZFS scale better and more cheaply than hardware RAID cards. Software defined networks are more flexible and capable than traditional gear, and the same applies to software-defined radios. Five years ago I had some production routers running Vyatta on commodity x86-64 hardware.

So I'll shop for 48 or 64 ports of 10GBASE merchant silicon in 1u, and I'll gladly pay more for a good implementation. I expect good and continuous software support and improvements and if they're not forthcoming as they so often haven't been in the past then I'll put OpenWRT on it.

I am saying the same thing This is my issue with companies like Arista - they add no value to the equation over the other exact same hardware offerings offered by bigger and more entrenched players and are therefore a risky choice, especially considering there business plan was to be bought out several years ago and it didn't happen.

Not that its the end all, but at last check Gartner (hence leader/axis) had Cisco, Juniper, Brocade and HP on the visionary side. Again I don't know a ton about H3C, but prior to that purchase my personal list would've removed HP since they did essentially nothing to push technology or stay leading edge in LAN switching.

I disagree. A year ago I had literally no other option than HP for a chassis-based switch w/ 10GBASE-T option, they were well ahead of everybody and it saved me thousands and thousands and possibly will continue to save me (by not having to deploy any fiber to the workstations after I filled up my 24-port PC8024.)

But that's my point -- how special can the software be if they all support the same network standards? You either do STP, RSTP, VRRP, VLAN tagging, etc, etc or you do not. So anything above and beyond that is the differentiator -- but how much can that be?

Arista claims to have several unique value-added firmware features; just look at their Web site. How much those features are worth obviously varies by customer.

They also appear to have some value-added marketing, e.g. touting latency even though it's the same as their competitors. :-)

I am saying the same thing This is my issue with companies like Arista - they add no value to the equation over the other exact same hardware offerings offered by bigger and more entrenched players and are therefore a risky choice, especially considering there business plan was to be bought out several years ago and it didn't happen.

Arista won't be around in 3 years, IBM and Dell will be.

I now see what you're saying. Are IBM and Dell selling 48 or more ports of 10GBASE-T for $12k? I haven't hunted for prices and Dell uses a quote model for the Force10 units.

Not that its the end all, but at last check Gartner (hence leader/axis) had Cisco, Juniper, Brocade and HP on the visionary side. Again I don't know a ton about H3C, but prior to that purchase my personal list would've removed HP since they did essentially nothing to push technology or stay leading edge in LAN switching.

I disagree. A year ago I had literally no other option than HP for a chassis-based switch w/ 10GBASE-T option, they were well ahead of everybody and it saved me thousands and thousands and possibly will continue to save me (by not having to deploy any fiber to the workstations after I filled up my 24-port PC8024.)

I don't think being on the order of weeks ahead of competitors to incorporate a different PHY is what most people consider technology leader/visionary. Usually that's more along the lines of pushing the envelope to significantly change high end port densities, next gen fabrics, stacking, clustering, virtualization, next gen OS development, unique security features, esp with the eye towards enterprise level integration with other networking technologies.

Again, I won't speak to new direction with H3C since I know about 30 minutes of IRF, but HP Procurve's selling point was that they were uninterested in any of that and would always wait for industry standards to be developed and ratified. That's the definition of behind the curve since typically competitors submitted their advances for standardization.

Pleahhse... I do not give a flying fart about Gartner's marketing crap especially about their nonsensical "visionary" BS - what I do care about are my invoices and a new, faster connectivity and one year ago no "visionary" had the 'vision' to build any 10GBASE-T option at the time for several months, (almost a year), not weeks, mind you... visionary, my @ss.

Indeed, I was pretty sure the S50 line-up doesn't even have the option of having all ports be 10 Gbase-T.

As for the newly launched Dell 8100 line-up, that's usually price competitive in principle, but you must be getting a huge discount on your corporate account, because the list price on Dell's website for a PowerConnect 8164 without any kind of support contract or any additonal modules is $20k , so you would be getting it for a third of the price. That's of course a hell of a deal.

Indeed, I was pretty sure the S50 line-up doesn't even have the option of having all ports be 10 Gbase-T.

As for the newly launched Dell 8100 line-up, that's usually price competitive in principle, but you must be getting a huge discount on your corporate account, because the list price on Dell's website for a PowerConnect 8164 without any kind of support contract or any additonal modules is $20k , so you would be getting it for a third of the price. That's of course a hell of a deal.

Anyone who pays Dell their list price is fucking insane. They're always willing to discount, and they dropped bid pricing requirements down from 20k to around 13-14k.

Yeah, of course, but since we are a small company we never got more than the price cut in half on an order from Dell, and even that was quite the exceptional case. I guess we'll have to negotiate harder next time.

Yeah, of course, but since we are a small company we never got more than the price cut in half on an order from Dell, and even that was quite the exceptional case. I guess we'll have to negotiate harder next time.

Definitely, don't be afraid to play them off against IBM and HP. Here in AU, if I mention HP suddenly the numbers get even better.

Also, HP's bid pricing starts at 25k or so - but when I've mentioned Dell, again the numbers get better.